Natural Language & Linguistic Theory

, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp 519–555 | Cite as

Deriving causation

  • Elizabeth Ritter
  • Sara Thomas Rosen
Article
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Revised:

Abstract

This paper analyzes causative and experiencerhave, arguing that this verb has little or no underlying meaning.Have comes to meancause orexperience when it forms a complex predicate with another verb. The addition ofhave to another predicate has the effect of extending the event denoted by the predicate to include a peripheral cause or effect (experience). This complex predicate formation takes place at the level of argument structure, and the interpretation of the complex takes place at conclude that there is only one verhave, and even though it seems to mean something, the meaning is not part of the lexical representation of the verb, but rather is derived from the syntactic structure. Our analysis also provides new insights into the Japanese causatives and so-called adversity passives, which submit to the same analysis as Englishhave. We analyze all verbs that contribute no thematic information asfunctor predicates. These verbs get their interpretation from their syntactic function, rather than from their lexical semantics.

Keywords

Artificial Intelligence Syntactic Structure Argument Structure Lexical Representation Thematic Information 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1993

Authors and Affiliations

  • Elizabeth Ritter
    • 1
  • Sara Thomas Rosen
    • 2
  1. 1.Department of LinguisticsUniversity of TorontoTorontoCanada
  2. 2.Department of LinguisticsUniversity of KansasLawrence

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